Thursday, September 9, 2010

[Alt: Which, at one point, led to a study showing that LSD produces no more hallucinations than a placebo.]

I find this comic incredibly boring. The joke is that the results would be wrong! That sounds like a joke that is only funny if you spend most of your life in a lab.

I particularly like the "treatment group" fellow and how he is just straight up telling the scientists what his results are. How conveniently he stands there, providing a contrast to the LSD girl!

And the question marks above the scientists' heads. Look how confused they are! They are 3 question marks worth of confused. That is so confused!

I think that drugs aren't as funny as some people think they are. Sure, sometimes, they are funny. But there is a sort of middle or high school mindset, where you've learned what drugs are, and seen them on TV or in movies, but not in real life. At that point, drugs are the funniest dang things in existence. And even funnier are people who are on drugs ! Maybe that guy is on drugs! Do you think she is on drugs!? I bet she is! oh my god that is so funny. Here! look at me, I'm a guy on drugs! "durrrr.rrrrrrr....rrhuh huh, heh, Ahm on Druuuuhhhgs." laughter, laughter.

Anyway, this comic seems to stem from that same mindset - throw drugs into any situation, and bam! it is immediately funny. I think part of the reason I say this is the completely stereotypical behavior of the drugged person: "oh god spiders!" Has he ever been in a room with someone on LSD?

wait i forgot, the joke is that medical science is not a real science, all those med students can write you angry letters because they aren't spending time on getting a real education.

Ugh, the new one's just bad. It has the worst possible flow. The "punchline" (if you will) is really the opening line -- haha, it's funny 'cause the last thing he said to him/her was about cat vomit -- and each line thereafter gets less funny (to the point where, at first glance, I thought it was trying to be one of his lame sweet/depressing comics. Nope, just depressingly unfunny).

But, of course, you're not reading the very first line of the comic w/in the context of it being the last thing he might say to him/her, so it just seems like a banal comment.

12:07 I can't see it like that no matter how hard I try. And I don't mean I can't register it as being that, I mean I really can't see how it could look like that. Unless, like, you think beards are normally up to someones ears, and only get higher as they wrap around the persons face.

Most recent comic: I finished reading it, I thought, "Huh, it's a subversion of the old 'she died and the last thing I said to her was something stupid!' thing." And then I thought. And then I realised that no, it is that, exactly that. Not only is there nothing new, there isn't even anything funny.

I'm ashamed to say I had a brief moment of GOOMH with the last comic, but thankfully my brain rebelled and made me realise that a) there is no way in hell that sort of irrational fear hasn't struck the vast majority of people in a long-term relationship before and b) he still fucks it up. If he'd changed the last line to something a normal person might say (such as, oh I don't know, "I love you"?) it wouldn't be entertaining but it'd be so much less awkward than it is now.

I feel bad commenting on how bad xkcd art is but... it is! I know the intention was to have this Megan flaying her arms wildly but... it doesn't work. It just doesn't. XKCD is so fucking static this sort of "multiple frames of movement in one picture" doesn't work right. But again, here's the mantra: Randall doesn't really care, he just needs a comic done in the next 5 minutes, damn it!

Oh, and here we have again Randall being an asshole for fun. Because having innocent people experience hallucinations without even knowing what hit'em is funny, and will not have any sort of negative consequences at all. Yes.

Finally, who the heck says "my rash has shrunk about 20% today" WHAT THE FUCK. Is this guy measuring his rash's total area? Granted, it can't be that hard when your body is one-dimensional, but seriously: people don't act like that! "Comics: art + writing" and all that! I'm tired of repeating myself.

And I don't think I want to see today's comic, so I'll be back by Monday.

So I assume it is a study about skin-rashes, of which 90% are treated with a topical cream, and not some sort of pill. How could he "sneak" LSD into a study like that, seeing as LSD is usually in a crystalline powder.

Professional Mole: Yes, PEOPLE don't act like the guy in the experimental group. Randall does though. That guy is totally Randall. He is a scientist, so he must dispassionately quantify everything. Well,actually he quantifies everything because he's autistic, but he's a scientist as well.

And now I am reminded of how terrible xkcd 701 was. In science, "you can't withhold [results] because they're not the ones you wanted". Sure you can. It happens all the fucking time. In fact, you usually can't get studies that don't falsify a null hypothesis published even if you wanted to. Even if you were to find that a prospective treatment for rashes doesn't work better than a control, while noting that it seems to have antipsychotic side effects, you'd have to design a new study to test the antipsychotic effects. The first study would still be unpublishable.

Anon615 has a point: how the heck does this work? Randall fails at many levels, people...

Sepia: Randall is a scientist... right. He always seems to me more like a "science admirer" than a scientist. And now I am also reminded of how horrible 701 was. That damned graph made no sense, and this man practically makes graphs for a living!

And, for a completely unrelated topic, I've read the new Cracked infograph on summer internships, and Randall Munroe sprang to my mind as I read the left column.

Professional Mole: You're right, he's not a scientist. But in his head he is. He's a "science fan" per SMBC 1777. And the attitude in 701 also seems more science fan than scientist. Real scientists are human. They can make jokes, be sensitive, or get involved in stupid rivalries and backstab colleagues. They're not perfect.

"Former NASA roboticist" is back in Randall's biography on Wikipedia. It was gone for awhile. Seeing it back makes me feel stabby.

I could be wrong, but isn't the alt-text incorrect? The control group in a study testing LSD against a placebo would take LSD, so he's just giving them MORE LSD and the placebo group remains unaffected.

No, because the control group is the basis that the actual test is compared to. They're not testing that the placebo does anything (it's a placebo solely because it's supposed to do absolutely nothing); they're testing that the LSD does something. Therefore, the placebo is the control group.

to clarify, the "placebo effect" refers to the strange phenomenon of a fake drug having effects similar to the real drug, if the recipient of the fake drug expects the effects of the real drug.

For example, if you have a minor headache, and I give you an inert sugar pill, telling you it's aspirin, your head would probably feel better if you took it (assuming you believed me when I told you what it was).

Obviously, this can present problems when you're testing the effects of a new drug, since you can't be sure if the drug is having any real effect when the test subjects report improvements in whatever condition the drug treats.

You control for this variable with a control group, which receives an inert pill/injection/whatever, without knowing it. If the real drug works better than the placebo, you can be pretty sure that the drug works.

A joke about LSD told by someone who hasn't the slightest first-hand experience with LSD -- HIGH CHANCE OF UNFUNNY.

A better LSD joke:

TV writers, they often use "acid" as a kind of a shorthand for "wacky" — they'll say something like "This sitcom, it'll be like Terry And June ON ACID! Imagine what that'll be like!" Yeah, I can imagine what that'll be like — that'll be Terry examining the floral pattern on a plate for four days...— Bill Bailey, Part Troll

I hate you guys. Once again I was tempted enough to read the current xkcd. Because I had to see if this was really true:

"You are in my heart always."

Well, what the hell, it is. "You are in my heart always". From a native Enlgish speaker. The only excuse for this alien sounding construction that does not involve Randall being either an alien, a robot or borderline autistic is that "You are always in my heart" would be too wide for the space he had reserved in the comic. It's a bullshit of an excuse, by the way, because all he had to do was either get rid of the "uh...", break the text in a few lines or even both.

The theme of the comic... it's sweet, I must say. The alt text kills the mood, though, so I'm not sure if he was trying to be funny or deep. I'll just ignore the alt-text and have a sweet sentimental comic.

You guys are good at seeing what XKCD does right, but 99% of your edits and suggestions are just awful. The only decent suggestion I've seen in weeks was swapping the last two panels of the tumbleweed comic. Swapping the panels of 791, or otherwise trying to put the cat vomit dialogue at the end, does NOT improve it.

Moving the cat vomit line to the end does improve it... but not enough to fix it. I like Andrew R's edit of 791 that puts the cat vomit line at the end because it ALSO puts the premise of the "last thing you said" right up at the top.

Having that at the bottom is awful. It's not a punchline, it's setting the scene which should help you understand the punchline. Having at the top instead, you start forming expectations already, that he's going to go "WAIT-! ...I love you." or something, but instead it's "WAIT-! ...I almost forgot I need to clean up this cat vomit."

Maybe in a well-drawn comic where you can actually see facial expressions and tell the difference between flashback and present. Even then, "smiles awkwardly" at the gruesome death scene of a friend/lover? We give randy shit for not being realistic you know.

Seriously. Imagine Randy's stick figures with a face that can make you "almost feel regret", or an "awkward smile". It looks even more horrid than usual.

Re: "Even then, "smiles awkwardly" at the gruesome death scene of a friend/lover?"

Well, the premise of xkcd #791 is that saying that he loves Person B before they leave somehow will make their untimely death more palatable. In my version, I take it even further by making Person A actually happy that he avoided the "cat vomit" ending and pleased with how his quick thinking saved the situation.

I'm also not sure how you can make fun of someone dying while being "realistic" at the same time.

That's the thing though. It's not making fun of someone dying. It's making fun of the idea that one might try to make the last words memorable every time someone leaves in case they die. One is a morbid situation, the other is someone being irrational and paranoid.

That's why the original sucks, because it takes something that could be potentially funny (person being irrational) and instead of subverting it (person doing something unexpected) it plays it straight (person makes the "last words" something worthy of being last words). Which is why the general consensus seems to be to move the cat vomit line to the end, because that subverts expectations and creates something that could be considered humorous.

Everyone look at the date. Now look at the most recent xkcd. Raise your hand if you think that's a coincidence. Normally I'm on xkcd's side, but I think that if Randall is making a joke here it's in very, very poor taste, and if he's trying to be serious and thoughtful he botched it.

"Everyone look at the date. Now look at the most recent xkcd. Raise your hand if you think that's a coincidence.Normally I'm on xkcd's side, but I think that if Randall is making a joke here it's in very, very poor taste, and if he's trying to be serious and thoughtful he botched it."

Now, I had something more important that idiosyncrasies to discuss... oh yes! The date!

"Everyone look at the date. Now look at the most recent xkcd. Raise your hand if you think that's a coincidence."

Yes? I mean... we know what Randall did the last time he mentioned 9/11, and it wasn't in good taste at all. This would be something much better in taste than his depiction of the towers exploding in RANDALL-O-VISION. I'm not even sure it is a joke. As I said, I don't think it's neither funny nor meant to be.

But I digress. What I mena to say is: this must be a coincidence. Now, we might be surprised on Monday...

re: #791 -- my sister actually does that, or at least used to, until she got a clue that it was kind of strange to blurt out "I love you" at the end of phone calls or before anyone leaves to go to the store. not particularly funny as far as the "my hobby" series goes.

Newest Abstruse Goose: awful, obviously ("HEY GUYS I JUST NOTICE: CATS ARE MEAN. LOL!"), but could have been worse: from the title, I was expecting it to be "Yes, I have Asperger's. So what? Asperger's is COOL!".

(disclaimer: i don't think AG guy has Asperger's, but he seems the type to claim he does)

I'm more disturbed by the fact that the Abstruse Goose character has a body! Of course it is terribly proportioned (as is the cat), but still.

(though I scrolled back a bit and apparently he doesn't do "disembodied heads" thing that often anymore, so this comment would seem pretty pointless to regular AG readers, of which obviously I am not a part (of?))

Firstly... would you mind getting a name? I can't tell if you're really the same anon as before, or if anyone after is you... you get the gist, right? I just would rather talk to someone I could refer to with a name.

Now, you're not angry. That's a good start. Why I sign my posts? I don't know. Because once I did and never stopped, in a nutshell. It's also an idiosyncrasy I only exercise here and nowhere else. Why? Again, I don't know. I know I started making it some sort of running gag, first singing out in different languages, then signing with (not always) witty and/or contextual valedictions, and now by saying "goodbye" as many languages as possible until I get tired and change my pattern.

I'm in med school and I have a professor who likes to reference ninjas and pirates a lot. It was cute at first, but slowly became annoying as the weeks dragged on. Last week, she sprang xkcd comic number 273 on us during lecture. I vow never to enter her classroom again.

The only way to drown out Mole's voice is by signing off, too. I'd do it, but I do not have the large pulsing confidence that he clearly does.

I didn't finish your webcomic but I read about 50 of them and I think I am done, sorry.

Oh, and Erasure does not say that "you're in my heart always" because that implies he has gotten the frigid chick. But no, he must wonder whether he waits "in vain". You must destroy a monster to achieve love, people, it does not just happen!

I enjoyed this one. What's the need to be overly critical about someone you don't know? If you don't like his comic, don't read it. The idea of everyone bitching and complaining about a webcomic is asinine. There are other webcomics. GO READ THOSE INSTEAD.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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